Day 5 (27/6) - Hangzhou: West Lake (Part 3)
Visiting a country with unsafe water in summer means spending a lot on it. I wonder how our ancestors survived in the EEA with so much sweating.
Exiting Leifeng Pagoda, I walked down one of the causeways bisecting the lake: Sudi.
I dipped my feet in the lake briefly, but not only was it not cold, it looked dirty so I quickly removed them.
Notice the speedboat. How unseemly, tsk.
(All the pictures before this point in this post were taken at "Watching goldfish on flowery stream")
At this point, a man in a bicycle came around shouting that he was selling ice lollies for the princely price of 1 Yuan (20 singapore cents). He had a cardboard carton full of what was literally frozen green bean soup on his bicycle so I aided in my protest at exorbitant concessionaires by giving him custom. It was slightly too sweet but still refreshing because of the lack of cream.
Peacock
After walking for over an hour (albeit with many diversions), I reached the other end of Sudi.
This was supposed to be Wu Song's tomb. However, the fine print said it was built in the 1930s, destroyed in the 1960s and rebuilt in 2004. Neither the English nor Chinese information said all of this; I had to combine the two. Maybe this was to encourage bilingualism.
Sign urging us to love and care for the living plants.
"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants."
On the bus back to the station I saw a "Prima taste. True Singaporean cuisine" restaurant in the same row as Starbucks, Dairy Queen and Ajisen Ramen.
I arrived at the train station with 1.5 hrs to spare. I trid changing it to a train leaving 1/2 hr earlier, but since it went to a different train station (Shanghai, not Shanghai South) I'd have had to pay 120% of my original ticket fee, so I forgot about it.
There was a "yiu2 you3 shu1 wu1" at the station, which a sign translated as "Tourist Bookstore". Unfortunately it was only for domestic tourists, since it only had Chinese books.
In the station there was a place marked "xiu1 xian2 hou4 che1" (waiting room to while away the time and rest). When I tried to go in, they tried to charge me 5 Yuan. Apparently it was a VIP lounge or something, or only for those on the most expensive train.
Sign seen in Hangzhou station: "Protect circumStance begin with me". Looks like "huai2 jing4" (environment, from the context) had been translated wrongly.
"Walk out the door happily, return home rejoicing"
Wth sign at the exit of the Hangzhou station waiting hall.
Back in Shanghai, I caught the last #3 train back, with 15 minutes to spare. However line #4 had stopped so I was deposited within 1 stop of the one I needed to get to. I was supposed to call YuCheng, Lin for directions but his line was engaged and he didn't subscribe to call waiting, so I just hopped in a cab (since it wasn't that expensive anyway).